Dr Venu
Vemuri

Dr. Venu Vemuri, D.O. (aka Dr. V) was born in Appleton, WI, where he spent his formative years learning and growing before becoming a pre-med student at Appleton’s Lawrence University Conservatory of Music and switching to cello performance, eventually becoming the principal cellist of the university’s orchestra and earning his Bachelor of Music before heading to Indiana University to pursue a master’s in music performance. But the call of medicine never left Dr. V, leading him back to medical school at The Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine where he developed a love of the spine and pursued an orthopedic residency focused on spinal surgery before completing a one-year fellowship at the Norton Leatherman Spine Center in Louisville, KY. 

After starting a private practice in Annapolis, MD, Dr. V returned to Louisville to work with Norton Spine Specialists and in 2014 joined Louisville Orthopaedic Clinic to hone his skills in minimally invasive spine surgery. He has performed minimally invasive spine surgery, including fusions, in ambulatory surgery centers since that year. Seeing a true need for better patient care, Dr. V recruited a pain interventionist and built The Center for Orthopedic and Spine Pain (COSP). The multidisciplinary approach of COSP was a huge success and sparked the creation of miiSpine, a truly comprehensive integrated spine clinic.

Over his career, Dr. V has performed more than 5,000 spine surgeries. At miiSpine he oversees more than 4,000 office visits per year and has performed more than 1,000 outpatient spine procedures in the past five years. He collaborates with ATEC Spine on new spine technology and contributed to the development of the Invictus MIS pedicle screw system, designed to reduce surgery time and radiation exposure.

For Dr. V, miiSpine is an opportunity to restore the human connection between doctor and patient. His philosophy has always been “less is more”: across more than 5,000 spine surgeries, and outpatient surgery in ambulatory surgery centers since 2014, that has meant the smallest incision that will do the job, less tissue damage, and preserving patients’ God-given anatomy. As a musician, Dr. V prides himself as an excellent listener who takes the medical school advice of “80% of the diagnosis is in the patient history” to heart. Using his sense of humor, he puts anxious patients in pain at ease with down-to-earth and easy-to-understand explanations of their spinal conditions. And as a long time sufferer of back and neck pain himself, Dr. V feels your pain—and has your back!

In his free time, Dr. V enjoys spending time with family, playing the cello and rooting on his Green Bay Packers and a born-and-bred Cheesehead. A lover of food, Dr. V makes sure to stay atop his Peloton® and do weight training to maintain his pre-pandemic scrub size, and to continually practice yoga to reduce symptoms of his personal back pain. Always a lover of music, Dr. V enjoys an eclectic blend of music from classical and jazz to rock and blues, frequently piping them into the operating room. And if you come to see Dr. V, don’t forget to ask him about his repertoire of hand tricks—including an oddly flexible thumb!